Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Home

'Katrina cottages' get touch of Florida

An Englewood builder has joined efforts to produce sturdy, low-cost housing for a battered Gulf Coast.

By JUDY STARK
Published August 26, 2006

	[Times photo: Home Front Homes]
	This Katrina cottage, on display in Englewood, has just 780 square feet, including a second-floor loft.

ENGLEWOOD

A home builder on the west coast of Florida has joined a famous Miami architect to build charming "Katrina cottages" that may rewrite the definition of disaster housing.

One of those cottages is on display for the next two months in an industrial parking lot here. The cottages, introduced nationally in January, have won praise for their charming style, which draws on the historic designs of the Gulf Coast; their low cost; their storm-worthiness; and their speed of construction. This one was built in just under five days.

Andres Duany, a Miami architect, land planner and New Urbanist leader, designed the cottage as an exact replica of a 1910 Florida cracker farmhouse.

The manufacturer is Home Front Homes, an Englewood company that specializes in panelized construction that is hurricane-resistant, energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable.

Home Front built the first new home in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina last summer, another Katrina cottage in St. Bernard Parish designed by Duany for the Louisiana Recovery Authority, said Brian Bishop, 48, Home Front's president.

Bishop and his wife, Jeanne, have spent the past seven years developing their system of panelized construction. The Katrina cottage is built like a "sandwich": outer structural panels of Hardieboard fibercement and an inner core of polystyrene foam.

The house is framed with pressure-treated posts. An engineered wood beam supports the roof. The panels are joined with a patented galvanized steel spline that acts like a tongue and groove.

Although the cottage had been designed earlier by Duany, "we'd never put down actual dimensions," said Matthew Lambert, Duany's associate at DPZ Architects and Planners in Miami. The Englewood cottage was "redesigned and tweaked twice" between Aug. 7, when work began, and Aug. 13, the grand opening. "Brian was flexible with his system, and we were flexible as well to adjust the design to work with the constraints we have."

The cottage's interior is unfinished and unfurnished. At 16 by 30 feet, it has 480 square feet on the first floor and a 300-square-foot loft above. The basic kit costs about $37,000.

"We sell you a house kit that any Boy Scout or Girl Scout could put together, like a precut Lego kit," Bishop said. It can be delivered to the homesite on a truck. "A house used to have 8,000 parts. Now we've distilled that down to about 100 parts."

Bishop, a general contractor for more than 20 years, says the house can withstand winds up to 200 mph. The walls have an R-value of 20 ("R" is a measure of insulation; Florida code requires R-3 to R-5 for concrete, R-11 to R-19 for frame). The roof is the code-required R-30. The pressure-treated framing posts and the engineered roof beam deter termites and rot, he said, and all the components are "100 percent recycled or recyclable," he said.

It's those energy-efficient and hurricane-worthy features that distinguish the homes, Bishop said. "Green is very muscular. Energy performance is so huge right now," as consumers pay close to $3 a gallon at the pump and have huge utility bills at home.

The company offers 20 plans that range in size from 500 to 1,800 square feet. (See them at www.homefronthomes.com.)The basic kit costs from $30,000 to $55,000; the final finished home would cost $75,000 to $150,000. The styles range from traditional Florida models to those that draw on the Sarasota school of architecture.

Bishop met architect Duany last year in Lake Charles, La., at a post-Katrina gathering of designers, architects and planners.

He showed his panelized construction kits "and Duany just fell in love with it and said, 'This is it, this is the product we'll use.' " Although Duany's firm had researched SIPS, they were reluctant to use those that were clad in oriented strand board because it is susceptible to water damage. The Hardieboard held strong appeal for its water resistance and for its feel to the hand, Lambert said. "It feels solid, like a real building, not like some others that can seem a little fake or soft."

Bishop "came at the right time, and when he showed exactly what he uses to put the pieces together, what the details look like, how strong it is, he outshone the others," Lambert said.

Then Duany challenged Bishop to build a cottage in five days. "We engineered it on a Friday, manufactured it on Saturday and Sunday, and on Monday it was on a truck heading to New Orleans. We had it up in three or four days and finished in 10 or 11 days." The house is featured in the July-August issue of Cottage Living magazine.

Lambert said Bishop's firm was "willing to look into different sorts of architecture than is typical" of those doing panelized construction. Some other manufacturers "want you to use the products and designs they've built the manufacturing systems around. Brian was open to our opinions on the architecture. He molded his product to our uses, and we molded our architect to their product; there was give in both directions."

Duany and other architects have designed a series of Katrina cottages to provide post-disaster housing that is low-cost, attractive, permanent, easily built and modestly priced. They are designed to be added on to as funds allow and needs require. The cottages have drawn interest from advocates of affordable housing and builders of resorts, second homes, student housing and guest houses.

Home Front Homes is about to open a model center in New Orleans to show its kit homes to government recovery agencies, homeowners, private developers and builders.

Closer to home, it is building 125 panelized energy-efficient and hurricane-hardy homes for Catholic Charities Housing in the diocese of Venice. This "green" village, San Juan Bosco, will house farmworkers in DeSoto County.

Judy Stark can be reached at (727) 893-8446 or stark@sptimes.com

IF YOU GO

The Katrina cottage is on view from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday through mid October in the parking lot of Home Front Homes at 512 Paul Morris Drive, Englewood.

From I-75 take Exit 191 and drive south on River Road for 12 miles five miles past U.S. 41 to Paul Morris Industrial Park (two miles north of central Englewood). Turn left into the industrial park. Home Front is on the right. Phone: (941) 475-6090.

[Last modified August 24, 2006, 13:00:07]